Meta wants to launch chatbots aimed at kids. Are we sure this is the right path?
Meta has announced the launch of a series of AI-based chatbot prototypes less than two months ago with the aim of actively entering the race for artificial intelligence, alongside the other big names on the web.
Now, Mark Zuckerberg's company is ready to market generative AI chatbots with distinct personalities across its social media applications. The launch announcement is expected to be made at the Meta Connect conference, taking place today and tomorrow, September 27-28.
Attract younger generations
The Wall Street Journal reported that Meta Platforms aims to attract young users by launching AI-backed chatbots.
The robots were tested internally by Meta employees before release. The tool is primarily intended to increase user engagement, although some may also possess productivity-oriented features, such as assisting with program coding or other tasks.
Targeting a younger audience has become a key focus for Meta, driven by TikTok's rise in popularity among teens, which has overtaken Instagram in recent years. In 2021, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company would reorganize its "teams to make serving young adults their North Star rather than optimizing for the greatest number of older people."
Since the rise of AI technology based on the ChatGPT language, Meta has changed priorities to build new AI-based generative applications and develop the metaverse.
Interesting Engineering reported in August that the chatbots will feature different personalities. “People familiar with Meta's plans told the FT that staff members nicknamed the 'personas' as different characters.”
“Their aim will be to provide a new search function and offer advice, as well as being a fun product for people to play with,” according to the Financial Times.
The Wall Street Journal reviewed Meta Platform's internal documents and learned that among the robots in the works is one called "Bob the Robot," who describes himself as having "superior intellect, sharp wit and biting sarcasm."
Ironic and disrespectful bots, but dangers of estrangement
The company's new design is said to be similar to the character Bender from the "Futurama" cartoon because "being a cheeky robot taps into the kind of slapstick humor that resonates with young people," one employee noted as seen by the WSJ in the document. Until now, humor has been the weak point of AI which is unable to be ironic.
In one case reviewed by the WSJ, the AI agent responded with a robot emoji and said, “Give me your questions, but don't expect sugar-coated answers!”
It will be interesting to see how a disrespectful and aggressive chatbot can reconcile with a digital world that is a slave to political correctness or, in the USA, to "Cancel crops" and "Woke". An ideology that would like to protect young people from any opposition or slightest offense, even to the point of making them estranged from reality.
Perhaps the only usefulness of these chatbots will be to discover that, in the end, many young people do not want cotton wool, but harsh confrontation with the reality of the facts. The same one they will have to live with.
The real danger of these chatbots is that they further contribute to the estrangement of young people from healthy social relationships with their peers, accustoming them to interacting only with computers in their bedroom. A quick way to set human society on course for extinction.
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The article Meta wants to launch chatbots aimed at kids. Are we sure this is the right path? comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/meta-vuole-lanciare-delle-chatbot-destinati-ai-ragazzi-siamo-sicuri-sia-la-strada-giusta/ on Wed, 27 Sep 2023 10:00:46 +0000.